1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein pertains to wheeled carts and methods as are used to transport case and other goods to and from trucks for delivery into retail establishments such as grocery stores, drugstores, or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art and Objectives of the Invention
Hand trucks, fork lifts and various types of manually powered, four-wheel carts have been used for many years by delivery and inventory personnel to transport incoming goods to and from delivery trucks into retail establishments. In recent years it has been common practice to optically scan bar coded merchandise which is incoming to properly direct and control store inventory. Manual carts which have been used to date oftentimes have to be unloaded for optical scanning or inventory purposes since stacked case goods cannot be conveniently opened, or if opened, cannot be adequately seen by inventory controllers when the goods remain on conventional carts. As most case goods on carts are stacked vertically, loading and unloading from such carts has also been a problem when dealing with vertically elongated merchandise such as wine bottles and other beverage containers.
Therefore, as a result of the problems and disadvantages of prior art carts and methods of use, the present invention was conceived and one of its objectives is to provide a cart for case goods which can be loaded for easy visability and manually rolled from one location to another.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide a cart and method for use with case goods whereupon the goods can be readily handled, checked, scanned, or inspected as needed without substantial movement or removal from the cart.
It is also another objective of the present invention to provide a cart which includes a stabilizing mechanism to maintain the cart securely on a truck gate lift during loading or unloading from the truck.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a cart which includes a plurality of lateral shelves for maintaining case goods thereon in a biased position.
Various other objectives and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed description is set forth below.